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We have told how this vision is to be procured, whether by
the mode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way,
what does it give to report?
The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring,
God engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour
and- rejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his
children- keeping all closely by Him, for pleasure He has in his
radiance and in theirs.
Of this offspring- all beautiful, but most beautiful those that
have remained within- only one has become manifest without; from
him [Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe] the youngest
born, we may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the
Father and of the Brothers that remain within the Father's house.
Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in
vain from the father; for through him another universe has
arisen, beautiful as the image of beauty, and it could not be'
lawful that Beauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.
This second Kosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has
life and being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that
diviner world. In its character of image it holds, too, that
divine perpetuity without which it would only at times be truly
representative and sometimes fail like a construction of art; for
every image whose existence lies in the nature of things must
stand during the entire existence of the archetype.
Hence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as
the Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by
its maker at some given moment.
That teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here
involved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is radiant
there can be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all
exists. And- since the necessity of conveying our meaning compels
such terms- the Supreme has existed for ever and for ever will
exist.
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